Gowalla Checks In at Disney Parks

Location-based mobile app Gowalla is officially a Mickey Mouse operation, as it announced the launch of Disney Parks on Gowalla, an initiative with Disney that adds more than 100 featured stamps to the app, with more on the way.

Gowalla added that it will retroactively issue stamps to the passports of users who have already visited Walt Disney World Resort in Florida or Disneyland Resort in California and checked in.

Director of business development Andy Ellwood told The New York Times‘ Bits:

That idea is not something that is isolated to urban hipsters in New York City and San Francisco: It’s open to anyone who wants to tell their story. Disney is a fantastic example of a place where people might begin to use Gowalla a little bit, and then understand the idea.

When we started building Gowalla a couple of years ago, there were three concepts that I was fascinated with. First was the idea of a digital passport that served as a travelogue of your life’s journeys. The second were the ski-area pins I had collected as a kid growing up. The third were Disney Parks, their attention to detail, and their ability to make a place seem rich with story. In fact, the collectible pins amassed by Disney park-goers were another metaphor we drew upon when imagining the concept of Gowalla.

After we launched Gowalla, both Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland Resort in California have been very active locations for us, with Disney World generating as much traffic on Gowalla as a medium-sized city. Many of you began asking some time ago that we feature Disney Parks within Gowalla. Of course, given the storied nature of Disney’s brand and characters, we wanted the experience to be official and top-shelf.

So it is with a tremendous amount of pleasure that I get to announce, in partnership with Disney, the official launch of Disney Parks on Gowalla, featuring more than 100 Disney attractions, challenges, and insider trips that give you a new way to discover the parks when you visit the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and more. There are even trips created especially for the holiday season.

One of the biggest joys of this project is seeing the Disney attractions and characters come to life in Gowalla. We’re launching more than 100 new featured stamps within Disney Parks today, with over 100 more expected by the end of the year. Each featured Disney stamp was painstakingly rendered in pixel form by Gowalla with the guidance of the Disney creative team, bringing you an experience that is truly 100 percent Gowalla and 100 percent Disney.